Reuven Rivlin

Reuven Rivlin was born on September 9, 1939, in Jerusalem’s Rehavia neighborhood during the British Mandate.[1][5] His family’s origins were in Eastern Europe, and his ancestors immigrated to the Land of Israel in the early nineteenth century as part of the immigration associated with disciples of the Vilna Gaon.[5] Some settled in Jerusalem and became part of the Old Yishuv.[5] Rivlin was named after his grandfather, Reuven Rivlin (1863–1928), who managed the General Committee Knesset Israel in Jerusalem, an organization representing Ashkenazi communities that also helped establish neighborhoods beyond the Old City walls.[5]

His father, Professor Yosef Yoel Rivlin, was an Oriental scholar who translated the Quran from Arabic into Hebrew and encouraged his son’s interest in Arabic.[4] His mother, Rachel, was a nurse who called him “Ruve’le,” a name later shortened to Ruvi.[4] She had also been active in the Irgun, the Jewish resistance movement that fought the British.[6] His father’s scholarly work included translating One Thousand and One Nights into Hebrew, while his political activities included involvement in the Herut movement.[5] In 1957, the elder Rivlin was mentioned as a possible presidential candidate.[5] Reuven later recalled that his father was so occupied with his translation work that, had he become president, he would have had little time for the office.[5]

Rivlin’s childhood included encounters with both Jerusalem’s religious traditions and its Jewish and Arab intellectual life.[6] Before Israel’s establishment, he accompanied his father to meetings with Jewish and Arab academics.[6] They also went to the Old City on Yom Kippur to hear Rabbi Moshe Halevi Segal sound the shofar at the Western Wall, an act the British Mandate authorities frowned upon.[6] Rivlin attended the Hebrew Gymnasium in Rehavia, where his teachers included the poets Dan Pagis and Yehuda Amichai.[7] He grew up in Jerusalem during the period when the city was divided.[4]

As a young person, Rivlin belonged to the Israeli Scouts Movement while growing up in a household loyal to Betar.[4] Ze’ev Jabotinsky was a source of inspiration for him, and his outlook combined attachment to Eretz Yisrael with liberal commitments.[4] His personal interests included a lasting allegiance to the Beitar Jerusalem football club.[4] He also adopted vegetarianism for ideological reasons, maintaining it for nearly three decades by the time of a later profile.[4]

Rivlin enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces in 1957 and served in combat intelligence.[7] After officer training in 1958, he held intelligence assignments in the armored corps and in Eilat.[7] During the Six-Day War, he served as a reserve officer in the command-and-control room of the 55th Paratroopers Brigade during the battle for Jerusalem.[7] His wartime service also included work with the Jerusalem Brigade and escorting convoys traveling to Mount Scopus.[6] He completed his reserve service with the rank of major.[7]

After leaving the army, Rivlin studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, earning an LL.B. and qualifying as a lawyer.[7][8] He subsequently worked in legal practice and became legal adviser to the Beitar Jerusalem sports association.[5] He married Yaffa, with whom he had a son, Yoel, and later married Nechama, with whom he had three children.[5] Recalling his extended family in 2020, Rivlin said he had nine grandchildren, including grandchildren with Yemeni, Iraqi, Moroccan, and Ashkenazi backgrounds.[3] His response to one grandchild’s question about their origins—“You are from Israel”—connected that varied family background to his understanding of a shared Israeli identity.[3]

Rivlin became prominent in Beitar Jerusalem in the mid-1960s and held several positions in its sports association, including chairman, legal counsel, and team manager.[8][7] His activities in the organization preceded his national political career and accompanied his work in Jerusalem’s civic institutions.[7] In 1978, he was elected to the Jerusalem City Council.[8] His municipal work included contributions to the city’s sporting and cultural life.[4] He also served on El Al’s board from 1981 to 1986 and chaired the Institute for Occupational Safety and Hygiene.[8]

Within party politics, Rivlin chaired the Jerusalem branch of Herut from 1986 and the Likud Organization from 1988 to 1993.[1] He was first elected to the Knesset as a Likud member in November 1988.[8] In the Twelfth Knesset, he chaired the Special Committee for Combating Drug and Alcohol Abuse and served on other parliamentary committees.[7] His committee experience encompassed foreign affairs and defense, constitutional and legal matters, state control, education, and culture.[1] He was not elected in 1992 but returned to the Knesset in 1996.[8] Over his parliamentary career, he served six terms.[4]

From 2001 to 2003, Rivlin served as minister of communications.[1][9] He promoted broadband internet services and initiated postal-service reform.[9] His ministry also opened the data-transmission and communications market to competition.[8] Other objectives proved unsuccessful: he did not secure Bezeq’s privatization or fully open the domestic communications market to competition.[9] His ministerial record therefore included both measures expanding communications services and reforms that remained incomplete.[8][9]

Rivlin served as Speaker of the Knesset from 2003 to 2006 and again from 2009 to 2013.[1] In that office, he worked to strengthen the legislature’s independence and defended democracy and minority rights.[4] His understanding of parliamentary independence included maintaining the Knesset’s standing in relation to both the executive and judicial branches.[4] During his second term, he made decisions contrary to the coalition’s preferences, including barring deputy ministers from voting in Knesset committees and opposing the measure known as the “Mofaz Law.”[8]

Rivlin first sought the presidency in 2007, receiving 37 Knesset votes before withdrawing ahead of the second round, which Shimon Peres won.[9] On withdrawing, he called on fellow lawmakers to support Peres.[7] His subsequent presidential campaign faced opposition from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu despite Rivlin’s own membership in Likud.[10] Following his victory in 2014, Rivlin declared: “I will be the President of everyone, and a man of the people.”[10]

The Knesset elected Rivlin president on June 10, 2014.[11] Five candidates competed in the first round, but none obtained the required majority of 61 votes.[11] Rivlin led with 44 votes, followed by Meir Sheetrit with 31; of the 119 votes cast, two were disqualified, while one Knesset member was absent.[11] In the second round, Rivlin defeated Sheetrit by 63 votes to 53.[11] Rabbi Jonathan Sacks welcomed the election, describing Rivlin as a person of deep convictions whose career demonstrated commitment to the people and land of Israel.[12]

Rivlin was sworn in on July 24, 2014, succeeding Peres as Israel’s tenth president while Israeli forces were engaged in fighting in Gaza.[13] In his acceptance speech, he spoke of the Jewish people’s 2,000-year wait to return to their homeland and expressed hope of building “the society we dreamed of.”[13] He emphasized the Jewish nation’s stamina and its refusal to abandon that hope amid turbulence and pain.[13] His seven-year presidency concluded in July 2021.[2]

At the Herzliya Conference on June 7, 2015, Rivlin presented his vision of a “new Israeli order,” describing society through four major sectors, or “tribes”: secular Jews, national-religious Jews, Haredim, and Arabs.[14] He argued that these groups were becoming closer in size and that an older picture of a clear majority alongside minorities no longer adequately reflected Israeli society.[14] He warned that ignoring demographic and social changes could weaken social cohesion and economic stability.[14] The speech prompted broad public debate and was followed by the Israeli Hope program.[7]

By 2018, Rivlin summarized the demographic argument by saying that Arab and Haredi children together accounted for half of first-grade classes. He presented their integration as a shared national challenge rather than a concern confined to those communities.[15]

Rivlin proposed four foundations for partnership: security that participation would not require surrendering fundamental aspects of identity; mutual responsibility; fairness and equality; and a shared Israeli ethos.[16] He presented the changing social mosaic as “not a decree—but a tremendous opportunity,” while warning against separation.[14] Economic inclusion was integral to the proposal: he argued that Israel would struggle to remain a developed economy unless employment and wage gaps affecting Arab and Haredi communities were reduced.[14] His formulation linked respect for distinct identities with participation in common institutions and a shared national future.[14][16]

At the 2016 Globes Israel Business Conference, Rivlin called for removing barriers preventing Haredi men and Arab women from entering employment.[17] He urged the integration of different sectors into Israeli industry and the wider economy, arguing that broader workforce participation mattered for both growth and social solidarity.[17] He said the President’s Residence and leading Israeli companies had launched the Collective Impact initiative in Arab society, including measures to track integration.[17] The initiative placed practical employment objectives alongside his broader call for partnership.[17]

Returning to the subject in 2018, Rivlin identified higher education, the labor market, regional cooperation, and school education as important routes toward partnership.[15] He again described a transition from a society organized around a majority and minorities to one organized around four sectors.[15] In his 2020 explanation of the presidency, he connected bridge-building to cooperation in education, employment, and academia and argued that the state should stand above tribal identities.[3]

Rivlin described building partnerships and cooperation among Israel’s communities as one of his key presidential goals.[2] At the June 2021 AJC Global Forum, he summarized that outlook with the words: “We are not doomed to live together. We are destined to live together.”[2] He called for understanding and cooperation across the divisions in Israeli society.[2] His presidential work also included protecting freedom of religion and promoting equality and prosperity for citizens.[7] Early in his term, he became the first Israeli president to attend a memorial for the Kafr Qasim massacre.[7]

Jerusalem remained a recurring subject of Rivlin’s public life and his meetings with foreign representatives.[6] In a 2018 meeting with United States Vice President Mike Pence, he described himself as a Jerusalemite and spoke of his family’s generations in the city.[18] He said his family had arrived 210 years earlier and characterized its relations with the Arab community as harmonious for a century.[18] In discussions with visiting dignitaries, he defended his understanding of Jerusalem’s status and told them that official meetings with Israeli state institutions required coming to Jerusalem.[6] He called it the “eternal capital of Israel and the Jewish people” and rejected UNESCO political decrees that, in his view, defied history or contemporary reality.[6]

His Jerusalem Day activities included a memorial for Ethiopian Jews who died while traveling across the desert toward Jerusalem, a state ceremony for those killed in the Six-Day War, and a ceremony marking the city’s reunification.[6] In May 2018, he was scheduled to attend the ceremony marking the transfer of the United States Embassy to Jerusalem and to welcome the presidents of Panama and Guatemala to the city.[6] Recalling discussions after the Six-Day War with Teddy Kollek, Moshe Dayan, and Uzi Narkiss, Rivlin also described disagreeing with Dayan over including Kalandiya and a-Ram within the area of Israeli rule, citing their Arab populations and connections to Ramallah.[6]

In international and Jewish communal affairs, Rivlin worked to encourage commitment to Holocaust commemoration and to oppose antisemitism and racism.[7] At the June 2021 AJC Global Forum, he urged world leaders to show zero tolerance for antisemitism, hatred, and racism.[2] He called for responses encompassing physical security, law enforcement, and education.[2] He also distinguished criticism of Israeli government policies from what he called anti-Israel libels, maintaining that criticism should be grounded in knowledge.[2]

Although the presidency is largely ceremonial, it includes assigning the task of forming a government to the Knesset member judged most likely to succeed after an election.[19] Following the March 2021 election, Rivlin selected Yair Lapid for that task, and Lapid helped establish an eight-party power-sharing government in June.[19] Across five election campaigns during Rivlin’s presidency, consultations with Knesset factions resulted in eight mandates to form governments.[20] He spent 47 hours in consultations with political parties over the assignment of government formation.[21]

Near the conclusion of his presidency, Rivlin met United States President Joe Biden on June 28, 2021.[22] Their discussion addressed the United States–Israel relationship, Iran, regional challenges, and opportunities for peace and stability.[22] Isaac Herzog succeeded him in July 2021.[20] After leaving office, Rivlin continued to live and work in Jerusalem and took positions as president of Electreon and honorary chairman of the Israel Democracy Institute.[4] His personal attachment to the city also included morning walks in the Jerusalem Forest, which he described as a way to breathe its fresh air and order his thoughts.[4]

Rivlin’s presidency made partnership among Israel’s communities a central public theme through the Four Tribes address and initiatives aimed at educational and economic participation.[17][20] He pursued these objectives within an understanding of Israel as both Jewish and democratic, emphasizing connections between Jewish and Arab citizens and between religious and secular communities.[4] His earlier parliamentary work likewise emphasized democratic institutions, minority rights, and the Knesset’s independence.[4] These priorities connected his service as speaker with the bridge-building role he articulated as president.[4][2]

His use of presidential pardon powers included social initiatives affecting Ethiopian Israelis, young people with criminal records who enlisted in the army, people economically affected by the COVID-19 crisis, and women leaving prostitution.[20] An end-of-term account recorded 1,830 pardons and the expungement of 1,365 criminal records over his seven years in office.[20] It also recorded 932 visits around Israel and approximately 130,000 people attending guided tours at the President’s Residence.[20] His presidential activity included 131 visits to IDF bases.[21]

Rivlin’s appeal for a shared Israeli identity extended to his account of his own family, whose grandchildren brought together several Jewish ancestral backgrounds.[3] He used that experience to explain why identifying as Israeli need not depend on a single communal origin.[3] In his description of the presidency, the aim was not to erase communities but to help their members recognize that they all belonged to the state.[3][2] His call for cooperation in schools, universities, and employment gave that aspiration specific institutional settings.[3][15]

Rivlin presented the Four Tribes framework as a political and social interpretation of changes within Israeli society.[14] He argued that partnership should protect each sector’s identity while establishing mutual responsibility, equality, and a shared Israeli ethos.[16] Whether the vision could be translated into reality remained uncertain.[16]

His views on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict combined opposition to partition with support for Palestinian citizenship in a shared state.[23] In 2010, while Knesset speaker, he said he would prefer Palestinians to become citizens of the country “rather than divide the land”; that approach drew opposition from Yossi Beilin.[24] A 2014 profile reported that Rivlin opposed establishing a Palestinian state and favored a binational state with full Palestinian citizenship over partition, while maintaining that he would not intervene against peace efforts supported by the government.[23] In 2020, he identified a lack of trust as a central obstacle to agreements and argued that mutual respect and willingness to live together were necessary for peace.[3] He also recalled telling Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that threats such as the coronavirus crossed borders and required cooperation.[3]

The 2018 Nation-State Law brought his concern for civic partnership into tension with the limits he understood his presidential office to impose.[25] After its passage, he told Collective Impact representatives that he sympathized with their request that he speak against the law but believed he could not do so without resigning.[25] He said that, if he signed it, he would do so in Arabic.[25] The law, passed with 62 votes, attracted strong criticism, including claims that it discriminated against non-Jewish citizens.[25]

Rivlin also advanced his own explanation for Israel’s lack of a formal constitution.[3] In 2020, he said the founders had expected a constitution within six months and attributed its continuing absence to difficulties securing minority support and leaders’ reluctance to adopt rules making constitutional change harder.[3] This was his political assessment of the constitutional problem, rather than an independently established account of its causes.[3]